Additionally, numerous religious references were changed or completely removed. Will's school was initially a Sunday school run by a priest and held in a Christian church; the American release simply identifies the building as a school and replaces a cross with a statue. In the Japanese release, speaking with the priest would cause him to begin leading Will in a prayer; in the American release, the teacher leads Will in reciting a poem. The ocean monster was identified in the Japanese release as the Biblical Leviathan, who was revealed to be a member of a race of humanoid ocean dwellers, as opposed to a unique entity. The American release indicates that Seth's consciousness has been absorbed into Riverson's, whereas the Japanese release indicates that Seth was merely turned into another Leviathan. A line from the game's climax, in which Will and Kara comment, upon seeing Earth from outer space, that this is what it must feel like to be God, was also removed.[3]
A notable change to gameplay itself is that the Japanese and American releases feature a different boss in the Sky Garden. In the Japanese version, the boss is simply a giant bird. In the American release, the boss is a winged Babylonian statue with talons. The American boss was apparently the creators' initial vision, and tied in with the idea that the Sky Garden was once the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the creators used the port of the game to "tidy up" the boss, as they were dissatisfied with the bird/snake hybrid present in the original release.[3]
I've been wanting to discuss this for a while now, thanks for this topic.
Alright, so I think crystal dynamics are quality devs and that this game is in good hands. I read this article and agreed that the tone of it was way too sensationalist, and this guy said a lot of REALLY stupid things about it in this interview that I hope is a gross misrepresentation of the cool things the game has shown off so far. But then I started thinking about it more, I don't really know how much that guy really said and how much was editorialized in. Did he actually use the word "rape" that much? A lot of crazy lines weren't direct quotes so I don't know exactly what I can go off of. Then the white knight "sensitive guys" started rolling in.
To me, a character like Lara Croft just can't win. Apparently now all of a sudden everyone just loved the past few games, but I know that on here I'm probably the only person that's mentioned them at all (in a very positive light as well) and the rest of the world either shrugged or complained about how she was in a cocktail dress one level (because Bond never does his assignments in formalware?). They toned down the stupid marketing of the 90s and were responsible in their image of Lara without being over the top last gen, which was very good. But lets be honest; nobody paid any attention to it! The series was going in a fun, Mission: Impossible sort of direction, and I loved anniversary. But I know that, for my end, bringing up that I was playing any of the new tomb raider games brought a lot of side-eye. When I saw this reboot I was instantly hooked. To me, it feels like LOST meets Uncharted, and that's fantastic!
But then the white knight brigade has to start coming out, saying that now, Lara isn't oversexualized in a way that she's confident and "sexy" and might be promoted in marketing material in that way. She isn't the character they always loved...despite the fact that the Tomb Raider series is a long running joke to a lot of folks? They ask a lot of questions that seem every bit more sexist than the article itself.
A female character shouldn't be developed this way! It isn't right! It isn't fair! It's sexist! It's blah blah blah. It raises a lot of questions, how can Lara be written then? Is there no female character in a video game that such a circumstance can be brought up to? I guess this isn't shooting down a T-rex but I think this game has a bold new direction. I saw the mercs touch her and honestly didn't think anything of it, I don't know if that makes me a terrible person or something but I read people going on about how these men have a clear intent to rape and blah blah and I was like "are you serrriiioouuuusss? RE5 racism all over again" but this director interview...
People are being pretty stupid about the whole thing, but this producer did the team no favors by not picking his words clearly, I think the mercs attacking her and it being somewhat sexual is playing into an obvious gender bias that would exist when brutish thugs are presented with a vulnerable, attractive young woman. Not to say its natural but c'mon, people would probably complain if she went through that scenario and it didn't come up.
I think the game looks solid, and the controversy is good for the character. Controversy creates cash.
I hate to play the comparison game, but video games showing women in compromising positions or being overtly sexualized is nothing new, Lollipop Chainsaw is coming out tomorrow and I'm pretty sure the white knight brigade of sensitive guys (tm) hasn't had any issue with that game. Or (not to pick on Suda) how about the raped assassin in No More Heroes? What makes what's happening to Lara different? Is it because Tomb Raider is more serious, more visceral? More brown? Because she spends time being hurt in a video game?
That said. I'm a little upset that this seems to have such a focus on action so far, the interviews assauged my fears a little bit and promised a lot of exploration, so we'll see what the balance is. I don't need side areas, just some gorgeous, sweeping vistas to look at (and maybe dive off of...)
tl;dr: kinda sick of a bunch of guys going around dictating what makes a woman in the video game world, there's a lot of messiah complex sexism and it's really irritating to constantly see. I mean how many articles does kotaku run weekly about women's armor not being adequate (usually right after they run a gallery of sexy cosplayers), or destructoid asking what women think about video games! Blah blah blah. Gender dynamics and equality has its place in the video game world, and needs to become more apparent, but look at the nerdos leading the charge :|
I think the point being made isn't that Final Fantasy should be more like Skyrim, or
that time travel should be more faithfully represented in video games. I think it's
that, in trying to appeal to both a wider audience as well as their established
fanbase, Square thought that they could offer freedom to the player while
maintaining a focused story, but they shot themselves in the foot by choosing time
travel as the means to explore the world of Final Fantasy XII-2 - something that, by
nature, creates unprogrammably infinite possibilities. By falling short of such a
monumental goal, they seem to be highlighting the artifice if this supposed freedom.
It's the symptom of a bigger problem, really. Square just doesn't have confidence
any more. There aren't any more visionaries like Sakaguchi, and the smart guys like
Kitase and Tokita are too busy producing Final Fantasy IV ports. They seem to make
everything with committees now, which explains the wholesale misunderstanding of
current design trends and the mixed-up fear of being too alienating or not being
Final Fantasy enough.
The truth is that we're never going back to the days of IV or VII or X. Square can't
focus on this mysterious ideal of Final Fantasy that they or their fans feel obliged
to resuscitate again and again, because it's not working either critically or
financially. They need someone who know what they're doing to take charge and make
something because THEY WANT to make it, not because people on the Internet are angry
or because some board decides its about time for another one.
The power of Gurren Lagann's story is in its telling. It starts as a three-person travelling anime, not unlike Pokemon, with episodes connected just loosely by plot. It then grows exponentially in scale - the size of the cast, the weight of their actions, the insurmountability of their obstacles. The cheeky tone gradually becomes Serious Business, and the flat ensemble becomes whole and integral to the telling. A mediocre show becomes brilliant before your eyes.
And like all good science fiction, the beauty of life is heightened by paralleling facts of existence with the unspoken qualities of human experience. In Evangelion this was done rather negatively, explaining that sadness as a result of being unable to relate with others is an immutable part of being human. In Gurren Lagann, the forces of creation and evolution are revealed to be a result of the love and FIGHTING SPIRIT inside of all living things, a power so great that it could create or destroy the universe, and it is possible that delivering a super encouraging speech will literally increases your likelihood of winning.
Every Citizen
Down in Midgar
Liked Christmas a lot ...
But Sephiroth,
Who lived just in the Northern Crater,
Did NOT!
Sephiroth hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite cares about the reason.
It must be that there were no (good) Chanukah specials to watch on TV at night.
It must be, perhaps, that his underwear was too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his kidney was two sizes too small.
But,
Whatever the reason,
His innards or his briefs, who knows why
He stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the Citizens,
Staring down from his crater with a jerky, Sephiroth-like frown
At the deteriorated buildings below in their town.
For he knew every Citizen down in Midgar below
Was busy now, hanging up mistletoe.
"And they're hanging their stockings! Oh, shucks!"
Then he snarled, "Boy, this really sucks!"
Then he growled, with his strong fingers nervously drumming,
"I MUST find a way to keep Kwanzaa coming! Err, uh ... Christmas FROM coming!"
For, tomorrow, he knew...
...All the Citizen girls and boys
Would wake up bright and early. They'd rush for their toys!
And then! Oh, the joy! Oh, the joy! Joy! Joy! Joy!
That's one thing he hated! The JOY! JOY! JOY! JOY!
Then the Citizens, young and old and really old, would sit down to a feast.
And they'd feast! And they'd feast!
And they'd FEAST! FEAST! FEAST! and vomit! and FEAST!
They would start on Citizen-pudding, those cannibals, and rare Citizen-roast-beast
Which was something Sephiroth couldn't stand in the least!
And THEN
They'd do something he liked least of all!
Every Citizen down in Midgar, the tall and the small,
Would stand close together, with Christmas bells ringing.
They'd stand hand-in-foot. And the Citizens would start singing!
They'd sing! And they'd sing!
AND they'd SING! SING! SING! SING!
And the more Sephitoth thought of the Citizen-Christmas-Singing
The more Sephiroth thought, "I must stop this whole thing!
"Why for twenty-three years I've put up with it now!
I MUST stop Christmas from coming!
...But HOW?"
Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
SEPHIROTH
GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!
"I know just what to do!" Sephitoth got goosebumps
"I'll dress up as Santa Claus, all nice and plump!"
And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a dastardly trick!
"With these horns and this neck, I'll look just like Saint Nick!"
"All I need is a reindeer..."
Sephiroth looked 'round.
But since reindeer are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop this jerk...?
"No!" Sephiroth simply said,
"If I can't find a reindeer, I'll make one instead!"
So he called Jenova. Then he took some red thread
And he tied a big horn on top of her head.
THEN
He loaded some bags
And some sleigh-bells all ova'
On a ramshackle sleigh
And he hitched up Jenova
Jenova turned around her face all red
She was tired, cranky, and wanted her bed.
"What a stupid idea! What's all this fuss?!
"What is really the point to stealing Christmas?!"
Then Sephiroth said, "Shut up!"
And the sleigh started down
Toward the slums where the Citizens
Lay drunk or asleep in their town.
All their windows were dusty. Toxic snow filled the air.
All the Citizens were all thinking about new games from Square
When he came to the first slum littered with filthy hair.
"This is stop number one," The old Sephy Claus hissed
And he climbed to the roof, empty bags in his fist.
Then he slid down the chimney. Pretty rather small.
"But if Santa could do it, then I'll see him next fall ...?!"
He got stuck several times, for ten minutes or two.
Then he stuck his head out of the fireplace flue
Where he cursed and he cursed.
For the fire was still going and he jumped out with a burst.
Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant,
Around the whole room, and he took every present!
Game.coms! And Playstations! Underwear! Guns!
Xenogears! Metal Gears! Furbys! And hot cross buns!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then Sephiroth, very nimbly,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, up the chimney!
Each one exploded into flames.
Sephiroth hoped he wouldn't be the one to take the blames ...
Then he slunk to the fridge. He took the Citizens' feast!
He took the Citizen-pudding! He took the roast beast!
He cleaned out that fridge as quick as The Flash.
Why, Sephiroth even took their last can of corned hash!
Then he stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee.
"And NOW!" grinned Sephiroth, "I will stuff up the tree!"
And Sephiroth grabbed the tree, and he gave the chimney quit a clog
When he heard a small sound like the kupo of a Mog.
He turned around fast, and he saw a small Citizen!
Little Marlene Wallace, who was not more than seven.
Sephiroth had been caught by this little Barret daughter
Who'd got out of bed for a cup of lukewarm water.
She stared at Sephiroth and said, "Sandy Claws, why,
"Why are you taking our Christmas tree? WHY?"
But, you know, that old Seph was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
"Why, my sweet little tot," the fake Sandy Claws lied,
"There's a pine needle on this tree that's ... missing on one side.
"So I'm taking it home to my workshop, my dear.
"I'll fix it up there. Then I'll bring it back here."
And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head
And he got her a drink and he sent her to bed.
And when Marlene Wallace went to bed with her cup,
HE went to the chimney and stuffed the tree up!
Then the last thing he took
Was the coal for their fire.
Then he went up the chimney himself, the old jerk.
On their walls he left nothing but hooks, and some portrait of Captain James T. Kirk.
And the one speck of food
That he left in the house
Was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.
Then
He did the same thing
To the other Citizens' houses
Leaving crumbs
Much too small
For the other Citizens' mouses!
It was quarter past dawn...
All the Citizens, still a-bed
All the Citizens, still a-snooze
When he packed up his sled,
Packed it up with their presents! The ribbons! The eggnogs!
The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The pogs!
But no one cared for those ...
Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Gaea Cliff,
He rode to the tiptop to dump ...... ah, the Christmas stuff!
"Screw the Citizens of Midgar!" he was Sephiroth-ish-ly humming.
"They're finding out now that no Christmas is coming!
"They're just waking up! I know just what they'll do!
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
"Then all the Citizens down in Midgar will all cry AH CRAP!"
"That's a noise," grinned Sephiroth,
"That I simply must hear!"
So he paused. And Sephiroth put a hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started low. Then it started to grow...
But the sound wasn't cussing!
Why, this sound sounded happy!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS happy!
He stared down at Midgar!
Sephiroth popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Citizen down in Midgar, the fat and the thin,
Was singing! Without any presents for the kin!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And Sephiroth, with his Sephiroth-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
"It came without Nerf guns! It came without Metal Gears!
"It came without DVDs, Yahtzees or imported beers!"
And he puzzled nine hours, `till his knee was sore.
Then Sephiroth thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a toy store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more! Like religion!"
Then Sephiroth thought, "Nah, you've got to be kiddin'."
And what happened then...?
Well...in Midgar they say
That the Sephiroth's small kidney
Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute his kidney didn't feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light
And he brought back the toys! And the food for the feast!
And he...
...HE HIMSELF...!
Sephiroth carved the roast beast into oblivion!
Then the devil threw away the filet mignon.
He jumped on the table kicked off the dishes and cups
and chucked all the pups.
Suddenly a daring lad
named Cloud confronted Sephiroth on top of the pad.
"I want my Zelda!" Cloud demanded.
"You want it? Come and get it!" Sephiroth reprimanded ...?
And so they engaged in an epic bout.
The clash of their swords echoed through out
as the rest of the Citizens carolled about the city.
The fact that the two weren't was a pity.
Sephiroth was about to deal Cloud the final blow
when a sleigh landed on the villain's big toe.
He shrieked and he shrieked but to no avail
Cloud stuffed him in a beach pail.
A lo and behold, out of the sleigh
came jolly old St. Nick, with a sack full of toys he was arrying-cay.
Santa Claus poured out all 'o the gifts into huge piles
and allowed the Citizens who take their picks. TILES!
For Cloud, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
For Tifa, a brand new virtual pet, Pocket Mime.
For Aeris, a bouqet of pansies
And for Cait Sith, a nice warm pair of orthopedic panties.
For Barret, a bootleg copy of Shaft
For Red XIII, a Furby that goes "ACHOO!"
And for Cid, ANOTHER virtual pet, Pocket Pikachu.
Finally, for Yuffie and Vincent came nothing
because they didn't show up for the ending.
What do you think? The black, right? 'Cause it should be something...
serious."
Amy was holding the dress in front of herself, then brought it down to
look at it again.
"No, that's too much. It'll be like I'm trying too hard."
She went back to her closet and returned with a pinker, more summery
top. "This is more cheerful. Wouldn't it be nice to be... No, that's
stupid, I can't go there like this, like it's a normal day."
She tossed it onto the bed. "If I had my red dress... He liked that
dress. Are you sure I didn't leave it at your place?"
Blaze had dressed in her purple regal garb, as she often did. She
didn't consider putting as much thought into her appearance as Amy
did. "I could go back and look again."
"No, forget it. I'll just wear the black. Black is... it's what you're
supposed to wear, right?"
"Black is traditionally worn in mourning, yes."
Amy appeared to have had the air sucked out of her by the word.
"That's what I am, aren't I? I'm mourning. But... I have to be the
supportive one. I mean, Tails, and..."
She stormed back to the closet, sweeping every piece of clothing from
one side to the other. "Why? Why is it all pink? Why do I always...
Why do I dress like some damsel in distress?"
She turned back to Blaze. Her eyes were wet and turning pink as the
rest of her. "How come I can't be the rescuer? Why can't I save
anyone?"
"Amy."
"I can't."
"It's okay, Amy."
"I cant do this!"
Blaze suddenly took Amy's head in her hands and pulled her close. She
began to breathe in a slow, steady rhythm. Amy began breathing with
her, quivering. When she calmed, Blaze cupped her face in her hands
and their eyes met.
"We can do this."
"I know. I know we can. We can be there for... Oh, Tails, little Tails..."
Blaze tightened her grip, as though to wring the doubt from her. "We
can be strong."
"Yeah. We can."
She stepped back and stood up straight, looking around her room.
"I wish I had the red one."
* * *
"You."
Heads turned to see the a visitor standing in the doorway of the
vestibule. Though he had traded his familiar red flight jacket for a
black trench coat, there was no mistaking his ovoid frame.
"You!"
Tails had already lurched out from his pew. He struggled to stand
straight as he walked toward the huge, round man, but grief and fury
wracked his body with tremors. He was always the youngest of them, and
now he was shaking like an old man.
He stopped halfway down the aisle, lifted his head, and opened his
arms as though to invite Eggman to take in the sight of the
congregation, their empty faces, the altar, Knuckles standing at the
lectern, the box holding his dearest friend.
"Congratulations. This is what you've wanted, right? Everything you've
built, everything you've destroyed. It was all for this view, right?"
Tails began to stagger toward him again. "You made it. Was it... worth
it?"
Tails' body seized, and he fell down to his knees. Vector, who was in
the nearest pew, came to his side and offered a hand. Tails slapped it
away and leapt up at Eggman, no longer hiding his tears.
"Why are you here? To gloat? You've always hated him, and now look
what you've done, look what you've made!"
His fists pounded hollowly against Eggman's soft exterior until he
didn't have the strength to hold himself up, and he slumped against
the rounded doctor and whimpered.
Slowly, gently, Eggman put his arms around the small fox.
Once he was certain there would be no resistance, Vector pulled Tails
away and brought him back to his seat. Then Eggman sat down in the
nearest pew and, along with the rest of the congregation, politely
turned his attention to the lectern.
That man could deliver a better eulogy than I ever could. Knuckles
cleared his throat and took a moment for the air to clear. They knew
each other longer than any of us.
He would never have thought of giving the eulogy if Tails hadn't
asked. He expected the departed's closest friend to speak, since
Knuckles himself was making all of the other arrangements, but in the
end Tails yielded this last responsibility to the taciturn echidna as
well. Even after all this time, in many ways, Tails still had growing
to do.
"As some of you know, my first encounter with Sonic was on less than
amicable terms.
"I... adopted the belief that he and Miles had invaded Angel Island to
take away the Master Emerald, which my people held sacred. I
challenged Sonic at every turn, not realizing what I was doing. I did
not realize I was being deceived."
He was unsurprised to see heads turning to look for any reaction from
Eggman, who feigned ignorance either out of pride or courtesy.
Knuckles sighed and shook his head. "I know what some of you are
thinking, and I'm afraid you're mistaken. There's one person to blame
for what I did - and that's me.
"I deluded myself into thinking that the world ended with me. I didn't
trust anyone from outside to let me be safe. To let me be myself. I
was stronger by myself. I was stronger alone.
"It wasn't until I lost everything that I realized I had nothing. I
was the custodian of a floating tomb and I didn't know anyone who
would call me friend."
Knuckles looked over at the blown up picture resting on the easel next
to the coffin: the arms rebelliously crossed, the eyes wide with
expectation, looking as he did when they first met. Is this how he
will be remembered, while the rest of us get older?
He gathered himself again. "He pointed me in the right direction and
he showed me what could be accomplished if you have the courage to
trust someone. As he trusted Tails. As he trusted me. And most
importantly, as he trusted himself.
"Sonic was a risk taker, and he would be the first to admit that -
like any of us - he'd made mistakes. But that's what life is. It's
mistakes. Live and learn.
"He never regretted a single thing he did. He learned, and he kept
moving forward. He had a steadfast heart of gold. No matter what
happened, no matter what anyone said, everything he did was a step in
the right direction. And it's because Sonic was such a risk-taker that
we're all here today."
It wasn't until then that Knuckles noticed the irony in those words.
He took another moment and looked out at the faces staring back at
him. Amy and Blaze and Cream. Vector and them. The bird rogues he
never really knew, but he was glad they were here. Shadow, Rouge. Big.
Tails. He never would have known any of them if he had stayed on that
island.
"It's because of Sonic that we're together right now. He was open to
every possibility that life could offer him and his world exploded and
grew to include each and every one of you.
"He was strong. He could fly. He reached the other side of the
rainbow. But if you look around, you'll see that he's still here in
each of us. In the way we live each day. Always moving forward, with
no regrets."
As Knuckles stepped down from the lectern, he felt lighter. Whether he
had gained something or lost something, he didn't know.
* * *
"That was really wonderful, Knuckles." Rouge leaned in to touch him on
the shoulder.
Shadow draped his coat over his other arm and checked his watch again. Why is everything she wears cut so low? She seemed set on showing
herself off to everybody in attendance.
Knuckles turned his attention from the Babylon Rogues to Rouge with a
sense of relief that didn't escape Shadow's notice. "Thanks. I
appreciate it. I hope he would've liked it."
"The eulogy he would've enjoyed, but the reception! I don't even see
any chili dogs here."
Knuckles laughed politely. "I still have some things to clear up
before I go. But, hey, Cream's family is having people over later,
though, so... I'll meet you guys there?"
"Oh, a get-together? That's nice." Rouge looked back expectantly at
Shadow, who made an exaggerated show of checking his watch. "Well, I
guess we'll... go and change first. See you later, Knuckles."
She hugged him, then turned toward Shadow, who was already walking out
the door into the cool dusk. She hurried to catch up to him.
"Somewhere to be?"
"We do now, evidently."
"Come on, just go with me. You don't have to say anything to anyone."
"I've had enough of that today." Shadow still couldn't feign vapid
optimism the way he assumed everyone else did, no matter how often he
was subjected to it. Sonic had pulled him into this world and Rouge
was keeping him in it.
He fished his keys out of his coat and unlocked the Escalade from
afar. They stopped when, in its headlights, he saw the silhouette of a
boy with two tails.
"Oh," said Rouge, "Hello, Tails. Do you...?"
He looked up at her with dry, steely eyes. "Knuckles is staying here.
Can I... get a ride home?"
Shadow looked sidelong at Rouge. He had no intention of acquiescing,
so he left the honor to her.
"Of course you can. Come on in."
As they pulled out of the lot, Shadow spotted Eggman walking along the
curb toward his Eggomatic hovercraft. Rouge waved politely as they
passed, but it was too dark then to tell if he had noticed.
She crossed her legs and sank back into her seat. "What a lonely man."
As they approached the intersection, Shadow turned his head to look
for oncoming traffic, and in the corner of his eye he saw Tails
looking out of the window back at Eggman without a hint of scorn.
Written for a contest at 1UP. The winning entry is here, with a runner- up here. Like mine, they all confront Sonic's characters with the simple tragedies of civilian life. And I am only half joking when I say that.
In Dr. Mae-Wan Ho’s essay In Search of the Sublime she describes
the first time she saw a performance of The Magic Flute.
The electrifying moment came when the Queen of the Night launched into
her aria. I sat bolt-upright on the edge of the seat, and must have
held my breath for the entire duration. My heart ached and tears
welled up in my eyes. Her voice rang through me everywhere as though I
had dematerialized into an exquisitely sensitive ethereal being that
filled the auditorium. There was intense excitement, but also
something supremely joyful and serene. No words can capture that
charged moment but that I was in the presence of the
sublime.
Sublime moments, she argues, are points where significant forms, in
active engagement, create something akin to love.
"Love" is an overused and abused word, and hence thoroughly inadequate
to describe the rich panoply of feelings that make up the aesthetic
experience. Nevertheless, for those who have been fortunate enough to
have experienced love in the sublime, it is indeed not dissimilar. It
too, is a feeling of heightened awareness of being connected, not only
to the loved one, but to everything else by sympathetic transference
(of both sameness and contrast). The lover is indeed in love with the
whole world. The loved one becomes a sign through which everything
else, even the most ordinary and mundane, is known and loved afresh:
the whole world takes on a new significance.”
Despite playing the game consistently since its 1995 debut it still
took more than a dozen playthroughs before the "Go for It!" line
distinguished itself for me. Earthbound is the only game where each
repetition brings new revelation. It is a mine which never depletes,
and with each unearthing produces a new and precious gem. There is so
much than endears me to this game that goes beyond the usually
ascribed appeal of wh-whackyness! and “It’s an RPG set in modern times
with like baseball bats instead of swords and stuff!” Director
Shigesato Itoi’s direct but rich and subtle script is only the
beginning.
I marvel at how the graphics which seemed so primitive in ’95 have
only become more timeless and iconic as the game ages; at how the
music is affecting with both melodic and ambient tracks, both layered
with a seemingly endless amount of samples and references; at the
sound that a bicycle makes riding through a swamp.
While all these are well documented details adored by many players,
Earthbound offers personal revelations as well. I was 14 when I first
played the game, and though I first dismissed it as childish and
simple, it lodged itself into my brain. One day I surprised myself by
unconsciously humming the theme to Onett. I was impressed that this
game I had found so distasteful had managed to imprint on me so
strongly. One moment in particular captivated my memory: the trumpet
player who stands on the cliff overlooking the sea playing Dvorak's
Symphony No. 9, Movement 2. Something about that haunting melody
overlaid with the Onett theme sparked a powerful sense of nostalgia,
despite having only played the game a few weeks earlier. This was the
first sublime moment and because of it I returned to Earthbound with
an open mind and an eager heart.
Earthbound has the unique and special property to engender nostalgia.
Both for itself and within itself. To a large degree the plot is about
recovering sweet memories, and there’s nostalgic quality in nearly
every location. A sense of both goodwill and impending loss. The
allure of Earthbound’s nostalgia is so strong that not even the game’s
primary antagonist is immune to its allure.
For several years after when I encountered a particularly beautiful or
seductive place in nature I would call the spot one of “My
Sanctuaries” after the gentle places of power in the game. Such was
the strength of association between Earthbound’s special sense of
nostalgia and real life discovery, beauty, and fleeting tranquility.
Since then I’ve made other happy discoveries within Earthbound’s mise
en scene (for lack of a better term). These include the recognition
that as you move through Onett to Fourside you also travel through a
year from late summer to the hight of spring. Or that the noise in the
background during Poo’s trail is the sound of Om. Unverifiable
interpretations these may be, but for me they enrich and personalize
the experience.
Earthbound is a game constructed out of small sublime moments. Or as
the game itself says over a warming cup of tea, “like a great
tapestry, vertical and horizontal threads have met and become
intertwined, creating a huge, beautiful image.”
Divine as these moments are, none come close to the definition of
sublimity as love. No, that moment comes, as it should, at the end.
The main through-line of the game is that Ness is visiting his My
Sanctuary locations to gain enough strength to defeat an evil alien
who has enslaved the earth in the future. At each location Ness
receives part of a song know as “Eight Melodies.” It’s a beautiful
song, though until it’s completed is filled with a considerable amount
of discord. During the final credits a expanded version called “Smiles
and Tears” plays while images from throughout the game play in the
background (there’s that nostalgic element popping up again). “Smiles
and Tears” is a moving and profound end to the game. The perfect cap
to an amazing ending. However, very very faintly, just as the music
swells to a climax, a voice whispers “I miss you.” It’s so faint that
many people miss it entirely. I completed the game at least ten times
without hearing it myself. After learning about the line on the
internet, and that it was Shigesato Itoi’s voice no less, I made sure
to listen carefully the next time.
One of the main questions in the 'Are Games Art?' debate is if a video
game can make a player cry. Most often this is couched in terms of
narrative, that a game could tell such a moving plot with such
compelling characters that the player would be moved to tears. While
I’ve been moved by games narratives before (Mother 3 and Shadow of the
Colossus spring to mind) I’ve never been close to crying.
"I miss you."
When I heard those words for the first time I felt such a powerful
upsweeping of emotion that I had to blink and wipe the back of my hand
across my eyes. It may not have helped. People have speculated what
this whispered message means. Is it Ness professing is desire for
Paula? Is it a reference to Mother 3? To me it couldn't be more clear.
Here, this game which I have spent so much time with, have discovered
so much about, which has influenced who I am and how I see the world,
and which knows me by name, was telling me personally and singularly
that it regretted that our time together was over. It was confirmation
of a profound connection between me: player, audience, person and a
immaterial collection of data and ideas put together by a man half the
world away who I had never met. It’s hard to express the depth of my
feelings. I can only echo the sentiment of Dr. Ho: no words can
capture the moment I was in the presence of the sublime.
“The creation of significant form is an act of communion, of love
between artist and nature, between artist and amateur, between amateur
and nature. It is nature presenting nature to herself through us who
are all of the same cloth, to reaffirm and celebrate that universal
wholeness that is both the source and repository of all
creation.”
"The importance of EarthBound isn’t found in its contributions to the
development of the medium, but to the development of actual human
beings who played it during their formative years." -Michel
McBride-Charpentier
Well, I just finished Threads of Fate, and the main thing I can say about it is that it's better than Okami.
No, I'm kidding. But also I'm not kidding. Threads of Fate might not be more clever, but it is definitely a better video game than Okami.
You know how in some games you can speed up the appearance of text in dialog boxes by pressing or holding down a button, and how sometimes speeding up the text and progressing to the next line of dialog are two different buttons? Well, in Threads of Fate, it's one button. If you double tap it, all of the text appears at once, and another tap progress immediately to the next line of dialog. If you hold it down, the dialog continues to progress until you release it.
Threads of Fate is stupendously playable is what I'm saying; so playable that you even feel like you're in control of the story scenes with each button press. The controls are tighter than Square's previous action-RPG, Brave Fencer Musashi, or even more so than ANY Square game since, I dunno, Secret of Mana. Running and jumping around is a Mario-esque joy, and every attack is answered by an enemy's collapse and a satisfying WHACK. Special attacks consume MP, and MP can be gained by landing normal attacks. Healing is done at the inn or via Zelda-esque enemy drops, and upgrades are handled at the tool shop for a nominal fee. Menu navigation and inventory management is minimal or negligible. The town of Carona serves as a hub from which you visit and revisit the various levels of the game - and is, brilliantly, shaped like a wheel, with the camera following you from a fixed place atop the fountain in the middle of town. It is the most easily digestible action-RPG I can think of right now.
This breezy gameplay is accompanied by a straightforward story. There's a legendary relic of unimaginable power lurking just beyond the boundaries of a sleepy port town, and several parties are in a Mad Mad Mad Mad World dash to get it, including the two playable characters. This simple frame allows for a steady pace and a steady escalation of mounting conflicts as the climax grows closer and closer.
It also has a really modest visual style with bright colors and simple textures. It's very plain, but used with great panache. All of the characters have big eyes and a small array of very expressive animations. And even though they aren't the deepest characters, they become more and more likable over the course of the game. They work incredibly well as an ensemble, and form one of the most cohesive and admirable casts in a Japanese video game behind maybe Phoenix Wright. At least for me.
It's not a COMPLETELY euphoric experience, though. It's been said that between the two playable characters Rue has the better gameplay and Mint has the better story. Rue is a shape-shifting amnesiac who wants to use the relic to resurrect his foster sister/savior/lover, and Mint is a magic-using ex-princess who wants to use the relic to rule the world.
Rue's scenario is rife with melodrama and "angst" - or what passed for angst in 2000. Man, if reviewers knew the kind of angst Japanese RPGs were manufacturing just four years later, they'd be BEGGING for Rue's story. Honestly, I remember Rue's plight being pretty affecting because it was so subdued, even if it was familiar territory.
Though, it's true, you can't deny the appeal of Mint's story. If Rue's scenario is Threads of Fate's "real story" then Mint's is more like a parody of that story. And, honestly, it's the one I remember most, and her crazy antics are much more in keeping with the tone of the game, and her interactions with all of the NPCs bring out the best in their characters, I think.
The main deviation between the characters in terms of gameplay is their differing SPECIAL TALENTS. Rue can transform into any of up to 5 enemies he has defeated, altering his moveset. Though really interesting, I honestly always had less fun playing as Rue in any form other than his own - because he already moved so briskly and controlled so well, few others could compare. The main advantage in transforming is accessing elemental moves specific to certain bad guys.
Mint's magic is cast by combining an ELEMENT with an EFFECT. For example, Fire and Normal creates and simple fireball, while Fire and Super create a devastating flame thrower. It's a breeze to use and switch between the various magics, though by halfway through the game you realize there isn't nearly as much variety in strategy compared to Rue's abilities. Sure, enemies might have different elemental weaknesses, but every magic spell is just... a different kind of projectile. Any given Mega Man has a wider arsenal of more fun weaponry to choose from.
Also, you return several times to the very first forest stage of the game for various reasons, which doesn't bug me as much as you're forced to return to the second, more maze-like underground ruins. It's not as much a sin like the backtracking in Musashi or something else, but I feel it could have been so easily avoided.
But, really, that's it. It's great. Unlike Musashi, I would happily suggest it to anyone. Would I suggest that you play it twice, one with each character? If it's your first time, yes. MOST of the game is exactly the same, but it's so interesting to see how NPCs react differently, and to see what the other guy was doing while you were doing something else. But this past time? I just played as Mint. I actually had to stop myself from playing as Rue. I like this game, but I have other stuff to do.
One last thing. I really like the soundtrack. It's very different from Musashi's bombastic music - it's super mellow, almost new agey, and very video gamey. This track has 1158 plays on my iTunes, mostly because it's on my sleep aid playlist. The composer Junya Nakano would be chosen by Nobuo Uematsu, along with Masashi Hamauzu, to help with Final Fantasy X's soundtrack.
Also, at the risk of sounding like a weeaboo, I'd like to say that the Japanese title "Dewprism" is a much more fitting one than "Threads of Fate" because it has less syllables and actually has anything to do with the game.
For a time I felt like I was the only person in the world with fond memories of Brave Fencer Musashi. I love the silly voice overs, the colorful world, the whimsy. Most people, though, remember things like having to be at certain places at certain times and being forced to make jumps at disadvantageous camera angles. The reason most people got it was to play the packaged Final Fantasy VIII demo.
The main reason I decided to play it was to make a simple comparison between the Square of then and now. Musashi works as a very interesting time capsule. There isn't a scent of angst in this game. It's all silly as shit and very simplistic; no illusions of grandeur, no one talking about darkness or dreams and honor and memories. Looking back, Musashi was the fulcrum balancing the old Square and the new.
The evil Thirstquencher Empire descends upon the peaceful Allucaneet Kingdom. The royal advisers descend to the foundation of the palace along with Princess Fillet, so that they may summon their only hope - the legendary Brave Fencer Musashi. But when Fillet performs the procedure (called "HERO SUMMON"), they're greeted by a short, scrawny, gi-garbed, geta-wearing spiky-haired boy who has no God damn interest in dealing with shit that has nothing to do with him. Only once he's reminded by the royal steward that the Princess is his only hope of returning to his home world does he agree to secure the Legendary Sword of Luminescence and recover the Legendary Five Scrolls before Thirstquencher does.
Musashi is a cheeky little bastard, and who can blame him? He's a hostage in the world he's supposed to save. He treats all of the stuck-up or weird adults around him with minimal respect and often resorts to unprovoked name-calling. And the funny thing is that everyone seems to like him regardless.
At one point you have to find a cure for the grocer's ailing son Tim - who Musashi has already decided is a little prick - so Musashi and the hotel owner (cleverly named Hotelo; he also has a brother named Motelo) split up to get the ingredients. Naturally, Hotelo doesn't return, and Musashi goes out to find that he's slumped on the ground, too tired to go on. The only way to snap him out of it is to berate and express your disappointment in him. Everyone's just asking for it.
And just think of how he treats his enemies! All of the members of the Thirstquencher Empire are verbose idiots, not unlike the people of Allucaneet, only they're also trying to kill him... Actually, now that I think of it, Musashi treats the bad guys pretty much the same way he treats the good guys, really, only he also beats the shit out of them. The main difference is that it's actually pretty cathartic seeing Musashi's aggressions turned against the guys who actually deserve it.
The cast is colorful and sweetly stupid, more likable then Musashi gives them credit for. They're excellently voiced in an overly exuberant Saturday morning cartoon fashion, some of the best and most fun voice acting in a Square game to this day, with casting provided out-of-house by Animaze. The characters were designed by Koji Matsuoka, a man who mysteriously has no other credits for doing anything else. More recognition went to Tetsuya Nomura, who did all of the official illustrations. Each character is used economically; for the most part Musashi has no more than three scripted encounters with any of them. Each of the members of Leader's Force - a Thirstquencher task force made up of three members, all of whom introduce themselves as its leader - are only met twice. The story moves at a pretty brisk pace as a result.
The outlier of this whole cast, though, is Musashi, the spiky-haired boy with a Sonic the Hedgehog-esque chip on his shoulder (even his homeworld rival Kojiro is a tightass jerk like the rest). I believe that Musashi represents the new Playstation-era Square looking back at where its come from. He's a Japanesely dressed warrior stuck in a land of European fantasy. Knights and empires might be cool for all the people that live around that stuff, but he's way over it. He's ready to beat the shit out of these walking cookie-cutter parodies, have some fun if he can, and then ship out, leaving behind this medieval cum steampunk world once and for all and explore new styles and new genres.
The entire first sequence of the game leading up to the end of the first boss fight is a really excellent episode. The kind of opening that Square RPGs are known so well for - Super Mario RPG's raid on Bowser's Keep, Final Fantasy VII's bombing mission, Vagrant Story's Greylands Incident, Final Fantasy IX's play and kidnapping - it's the kind of bite size video game level you would be happy to play by itself once in a while. It stands as a satisfying chunk of story on its own, it steadily unfolds the mechanics of the game and promptly rewards the player for their understanding, and it perfectly represents the world while still promising greater wonders beyond it.
Musashi sets out with a specific objective - get the Legendary Sword Lumina, bring it back, go home. The player is introduced to Fusion, the less legendary sword with which Musashi performs his most basic attack. Soon you discover that Fusion can -Assimilate- the abilities of an enemy, Kirby style, providing you with a new skill. The first area you can explore is nice and linear with a variety of enemies with which to practice Assimilation. You come to a stream with a makeshift drawbridge risen on the opposite side, and with a hint from Musashi you Assimilate a projectile attack from one of Thirstquencher's lackeys and shoot at the planks of the bridge, causing them to fall and letting you pass. With great relief you discover that puzzles in this game will be solved organically using actions that are already useful in their own right, not just by grabbing keys.
Musashi soon arrives at the tower that holds Lumina. Another training puzzle comes up, requiring you to use the same projectile ability, followed by a third puzzle that requires you to find a new ability that can be used to freeze enemies in place - whom you can use to depress a switch that lowers the force field around Lumina.
After obtaining Lumina, a giant stone head falls from the towers and rolls after a fleeing Musashi, down the side of the tower, down the forest path (when you realize that the useless boulders you passed by on the way to the tower are now serving as obstacles in your mad dash), all while Musashi frantically shouts at the player, "Whoa! JUMP!!" at the sight of pits and bumps, all the way to the palace, where Musashi finds Princess Fillet being held by Thirstquencher's Rootrick, a large and inexplicably Texan soldier, who tells Musashi that he's "gonna get a lickin'" before teleporting away with Fillet in tow.
The first boss fight which follows is a wonderful bout with a quadrapedal steam-powered war machine that starts in the great hall of the palace and sends you crashing through the wall out into the village as the monstrosity knocks over pillars and crushes houses like a huge dick. It's the first challenge that requires a combination of all the techniques using Fusion and Lumina that you've learned so far. Musashi ends the fight by tossing the mangled machine off of a cliff, shouting, "Hey! You forgot something!" and crushing it with its own wrecking ball. He then falls asleep where he stands, exhausted. The screen fades to black and you're prompted to save your game for the first time.
The excitement of discovery is sustained into the next chapter, when you first explore Grillin' Village. Half of the village is useless in a harmless sort of way, but all the NPCs have names, character portraits and daily activities. The shopkeeps have their own personalities and keep their own hours.
The pawn shop serves as one long running gag; seemingly valuable treasures that are discovered in dungeons await appraisal from the grumpy pawn shop owner, revealing them to be useless trash like pie tins and shovels, which you can then sell for a handful of dran. In a clever reversal, seemingly useless junk will turn out to be pieces of Legendary Armor once appraised.
From the village you can explore the rest of the kingdom. There aren't a great many locations, and they're not graphically astounding, but they are varied, colorful, and a few of the set pieces actually surprisingly striking. The dragon's head on Twin Peak Mountain, the eerily glowing underground lake, the great tree that contains all of the steam valves that keep the kingdom running...
Steamwood.
Pretty early on, Steamwood goes haywire, and the people of the village plead to you to fix it, because the guys that usually take care of it are useless I guess? After trotting through a forest path where pipes intertwine with trees, you reach Steamwood. To keep the whole thing from exploding, you must release the pressure valves, a mini-game that involves pressing the X button at the right time. Releasing each valve isn't difficult. The hard part is getting to each valve in the proper order before the valve timer (different from the "Game Over" timer) reaches 0.
Steamwood is made up of a circular catwalks with an elevator going up and down between the floors, and the camera is set low to follow Musashi - holding left or right for long enough will bring you in a circle. These catwalks don't have guardrails, though, and some of the direct routes to the valves are blocked by scalding columns of steam. Reaching the valves requires jumping onto pipes and support beams before landing on the catwalk again. The low camera angle makes it very difficult to make a direct landing, and landing on the curve of a pipe will cause Musashi to freeze, slide over the edge and fall off, leaving you to try and land on a lower platform or fall all the way to the bottom. If you can't reach the next valve again before the timer hits 0, you have to start again from the beginning.
Must people see their first Game Over screen at Steamwood. Most detractors of Brave Fencer Musashi cite Steamwood as the game's zenith of suck. I respectfully disagree: when Steamwood goes nuts a second time and you have to release all of the valves again, that might be worse.
While Steamwood is the most obvious example of a portion of the game in which a terrible environmental layout and damning camera angle act as a substitute for a challenge, it is not the last and certainly not the worst.
At the point-of-no-return before the final dungeon when you can't return to the village, Musashi reaches a rather gorgeous multi-tiered fountain floating high up in the sky. To reach the top of the fountain where the Fifth Scroll lies, you must utilize all of Lumina's elemental powers - earthquakes, flamethrowing, walking on water - and, of course, jumping.
At this point in the game, you've already figured out that after falling off-screen, Musashi takes damage and is teleported back to the last piece of "solid ground" he stood on - that excludes conveyor belts, mine carts, rotating platforms, etc. For some unfathomable reason, only a few portions of the fountain count as "solid ground". This means that, until you reach certain specified invisible checkpoints, you will have to start over from the beginning, which means having to go all the way back up to where you fell from before you even have a chance to make the jump again. I spent something like ten God damn minutes at this fountain. It's not the grandest locations in the game in terms of scale; it might even be the smallest.
The whole game isn't like this. Some dungeons are downright fun, even. The underground ruin has a wide enough variety of challenges to accept a couple of pitfalls, and the Frozen Palace is a beautifully designed, Zelda-esque locale. The best portion of the game is toward the end, the sequence before taking on the final leader of Leader's Force in a Dance Dance Revolution competition (You heard me). It's a giant courtyard filled with big, threatening enemies, the most powerful bad guys you meet, and Assimilating them grants you the most powerful abilities. It's really simple, nothing more than a few arenas strung together, but each combination of obstacles requires quickly refining your skills in crowd control, prioritizing threats and choosing the right attack for the right job.
It's a very spectacular sequence, especially considering the previous portion of the dungeon is one long boring puzzle that involves walking through a series of doors in the proper order, and starting over from the beginning if you mess it up. Steamwood rearing its ugly head again.
When I first started writing about Musashi before I finished it I planned on being way more positive and not getting hung up on how joyless jumping around is, but it's like a thick coffee ring right on top of it, I can't look past it, mostly because it doesn't make any sense. The beginning of the game has you fighting colorful henchmen and monsters with TWO SWORDS, using your foes' own talents against them, neutralizing them with elemental magic, doing things you would expect to be doing in a game called Brave Fencer Musashi. But then you have room after room in which the only button you touch is the one that makes Musashi jump.
In combat you have options with which to overcome your obstacles, and you gain more as you progress. All of these options are moot when a long drop is involved. You can't stab, cut or burn a pitfall. There aren't even bad guys around during these jumping sequences most of the time - probably because they thought it would be too infuriating to deal with falling and being attacking at the same time - so you're just alone in a room, falling off of ledges as many times as you care to, being teleported back onto solid ground, losing a sliver of HP at a time. Even the HP gauge starts to feel less like a measure of your ability to resist your attackers' onslaughts and more like a "how many times you can fall off of ledges" gauge. It's like a joke. Musashi has TWO SWORDS with which to cut down his aggressors, but I guarantee that you'll lose just as much of your HP falling off of things.
Going through dungeons with lots of jumping often made me second guess the fun parts of the game, if they were even that well-designed. Often they really are, the beginning and the end of the game being particularly swell, as well as most of the boss fights. But with some thought, a few dungeons are revealed to be merely mediocre, especially when you realize that you can get from one end to the other by simply running past most enemies. Restorative power-ups which were littered around early on in the game mysteriously disappear as the game progresses, and enemies drop them less frequently as well. Consistent Musashi ain't.
I went through most of the game before I was able to articulate why I wasn't having fun. Why? It could be that Tsuyoshi Sekito's fucking amazing soundtrack rendered me deaf to its problems. At 75 tracks over two discs, it's an unheard amount of work that's gone into a Square game's sound design outside of Final Fantasy. I can think of one dungeon that plays 6 different songs, a different one in each area. Soaring, epic, often triumphant, it's the kind of music that dares all actions that occur while it's playing to be of incredibile importance. Most songs are bombastic and self-important, like Musashi himself, with royal horns and Japanese wood blocks and all manner of instrumentation mixed up of East and West. It makes exciting moments feel absolutely exhilarating, and make boring parts seem like perfectly necessary interludes between the fun parts. I wish I knew more about music so I could explain how much I love this soundtrack properly.
That makes the final result exceedingly sad as a result. The song that plays during the credits is the perfect cap on what Brave Fencer Musashi was supposed to be, the end of an adventure but looking back, I feel like the music is almost too good for it. Looking at all of the fun and colorful art that comes up in the credits, I can't find any drawings of Steamwood. It feels like a lie. The credits adamantly insist to everyone that the game was exactly as fun as it promised to be, but every once in a while you catch it looking at you in a way that you know means, "If you tell your parents that I did anything to you, I will hurt you worse next time."
Did Square learn any lessons from Brave Fencer Musashi? They did allow its spiritual successor, Threads of Fate, to be published with improved control over jumping and far less pitfalls. It was also among a huge number of new IPs in a four year span across various genres. Its sense of humor would lay dormant until Final Fantasy IX, after which both humor and new ideas would be sealed away like some ancient evil. Neither would truly resurface until The World Ends With You eight years later. Four Heroes of Light would also echo Musashi's colorful world with simple visuals and a simple story, but it might not have been made without having "Final Fantasy" attached to it.
The main difference between then and now is that things were less homogeneous then and fans were more forgiving of a developer trying to branch out. Square's followers are more bitter now. Square was erroneously rewarded for the comforting familiarity of Advent Children and the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, punished for exploring in Final Fantasy XII, both rewarded AND punished for Kingdom Hearts' sequels spin-offs, and rewarded and punished AGAIN for attempting to be familiar AND new with Final Fantasy XIII.
After all of these years, there are simply too many different expectations for what Square is supposed to be and what they are meant to do, and everyone believes that they must sift through these conflicting wishes and do what is best for everyone.
Square is like Musashi: a hero and a hostage. The best thing they can do is act take a cue from Musashi and fuck everyone. Do what needs to be done, but do it THEIR way. They have to take a risk, come from someplace real. In all of these years, Square has never really produced an auteur or a pioneer. No Kojima, no Cliff Bleszinski, not even a David Cage. And maybe they never will. But I'd still like to see Musashi come back. I'd be interested to see what he would have to say looking back on the time between now and his previous appearance.
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is evolution in action.
Every Metal Gear Solid game improves upon the formula of the previous
title while at the same time utilizing a feature that does not work as
well as it should. It was first-person gunfights in MGS2, camouflage
in Snake Eater, and expanding your arsenal in MGS4 (along with
changing or dropping rules from act to act). Peace Walker is the first
Metal Gear to improve upon all the features of its predecessors as
well as introducing new features like cooperative play and
mission-based progression that actually work. [Thought I guess
Portable Ops was good practice.]
While MGS4 was clearly a game about Kojima's mid-life crisis, Peace
Walker is much calmer and more focused, a necessary environment for an
integral chapter in the story of Big Boss' becoming the enemy of the
world. In Big Boss' conversations with his comrades - about nuclear
war, El Che, Stanley Kubrick, Alan Turing - it becomes obvious that
Kojima has an intense love of history and technology, how they have
affected his life and how maybe he can affect them. It's been said
that Snake and Big Boss are the obvious representatives for Kojima in
the world of his games, but I believe it's Master Miller - a man who
defines and is defined by his industry, whose identity is formed by
East and West - who speaks for him.
I have a hard time believing that Peace Walker will be anyone's
favorite Metal Gear Solid game - often it's the ridiculous mistakes in
form that appeals to lovers of the series - but I believe that Peace
Walker is Kojima Studios most-polished work, as both a video game and
a work of historical fiction.
Mass Effect 2 is the game everyone should be making.
It's been said that interactivity in video games is an illusion. You
can either make your character do something that doesn't make sense
and break the story, or you can make them do whatever makes the most
sense and be nothing but an accomplice to the story that was supposed
to happen anyway.
The solution to this is, quite simply, making each choice believable,
and Mass Effect 2 proves that the way to do that is by utilizing the
skills of competent artists: good writers and good actors.
A good game is a world, and that world must be constructed with loving
detail. Every event in Mass Effect is well-written, well-voiced, many
are even well-photographed, and all of them matter. Bioware is a lot
like Pixar in a way. They're not pioneers so much as they're just
really good at their job. Why doesn't everyone work so hard?
Bayonetta is the new standard for "over the top".
It was one thing to discover that she has guns in the heels of her
shoes, but once you see her make a giant spider out of her own hair,
you know that nothing else is like Bayonetta and nothing else will be
for a long time. Bayonetta tells a story that doesn't make any sense,
but all of the events transpire at such a monumental scale - the force
of your finishing blow on each boss is measured in gigatons - that you
can't help but want to step up to each new challenge and see how much
bigger your obstacles become.
Bayonetta is also the only game I've played twice this year, and I'm
thinking of playing it a third time.
Kirby's Epic Yarn is pure.
The Game Over as a concept is dead. No one wants to play a game that
doesn't want to be played.
You cannot die in Epic Yarn, but, on a personal level, you can
certainly lose. For every bit of damage Kirby and Prince Fluff
receive, they only lose the beads which they collect throughout the
level - an interesting cannibalizing of Sonic's rings. People who
aren't very good at video games will just be happy to have gone
through the level and seen all of the cute and yarny things that Kirby
can do, and pros can stroke their egos knowing that they kept all of
their beads and can use them to go and decorate Kirby's apartment in
Quilty Square.
Kirby exemplifies the extreme playability expected of a Nintendo game,
every level a perfect blend of cakewalks and hurdles, door prizes and
trophies.
I was pretty harsh on Heavy Rain when it came out. I said that it was
pushing the industry further in the wrong direction, that its sense of
importance suggested in promotional material was entirely unwarranted,
that it was written by a talentless, racist lunatic. While I don't
think these assertions are incorrect, Heavy Rain is absolutely worthy
of at least one play by everyone.
Even with an insipid script and a schizophrenically cast array of
voice actors - stuff that even games that aren't trying to be movies
usually get right - Heavy Rain enthralls by throwing its heroes into
progressively more dire situations, and it can really get the blood
pumping when you're the one who has to start making the tough
decisions. It's at these points that Heavy Rain - often referred to
derisively as a playable movie - actually highlights the great
possibilities available to video games, at least if they can just
learn how to imbue their scenarios with weight.
Heavy Rain often doesn't know which side of the line to be on. For a
game whose most prided feature is being able to change the course of
the story, there are many times where it feels like you're simply
along for the ride, just watching a scene from a mediocre movie. Those
feelings usually go away, though, when you're asked to do something
just terrible.
The people I want to thank most at Quantic Dream are the artists who
built all of Heavy Rain's environments. The Mars household, Madison's
loft and the ethereal virtual surroundings of the ARI are incredibly
realistic and some of the most beautiful locales in video games.
I'd also like to the thank Normand Corbeil for composing the stunning
score that acted as Heavy Rain's emotional cornerstone.
Vanquish is looking for love in all the wrong places.
When people were talking about being disappointed with Vanquish's
story I thought that they were nuts until I played it myself. It's not
that it's impeccably stupid, it's just... not interesting. Considering
these guys are responsible for Godhand and Bayonetta and the director
is responsible for Resident Evil 4, its surprising how unengaged I
usually am by what's going on. Protagonist Sam Gideon isn't an
impetuous douchebag like Gene, cool in a doofy kind of way like Leon,
or just fucking ridiculous like Bayonetta. He's just a really basic
gruff guy who smokes. If you can't get me to like a guy who
rocket-slides around on his knees while shooting a machine gun in slow
motion and drill kicks holes through giant robots, you really screwed
up somewhere.
On the surface Vanquish satisfies all the needs of an action game in
terms of challenge and control (even though your melee attack
bafflingly deprives you of the ability to go into bullet time when you
most need it), but there are very few kinds of enemies to fight, and
thusly very few reasons to alter your strategy. You fight the same
giant transforming robot something like 18 times. While I'm
rocket-dashing from cover to cover and exploding Russian battle-droids
with my giant shotgun, I actually spend most of my time compulsively
obsessing over whether or not I should bring a certain kind of weapon
with me because, "Even though it's useless now, maybe it will be
better when I upgrade it!"
I also found it really frustrating that cut scenes throughout the game
suggest that Sam's really concerned about the welfare of his
allies on the battlefield, and the game even keeps track of how many
are KIA per mission, and yet we're never actually given a reason to
care about them. Some have names for some reason, but most don't. It's
like, what are you doing, game? If you want me to care about these
guys, make them likable or some shit.
It sounds like I'm really hard on it, but I guess it's no more of a
shallow mess than many other games. I guess I just expected more from
the makers of AAA titles.
Medal of Honor (2010) is a war game for those who don't play war games.
Its controls mimic precisely those of any of the recent Call of Duty
games, and like those games it also has you playing the roles of
several soldiers throughout its campaign, but Medal of Honor also has
a pervading sense of weight that becomes more and more apparent when
you realize there are guys on the other side of the world doing
this shit right now. The stoic Navy SEALS, the grizzled Delta
Forces and the gung-ho Army Rangers are all members of a family with
such strong ties of camaraderie, and the Man in Charge could never
understand why they would compromise a mission for one or two of their
own.
These kind of themes aren't alien to war stories, but they come to
light so subtly it's kind of surprising how affecting the game can be
when the shit hits the fan. There were a few moments in the game when
I believed that, just maybe, a video game could have more to say about
the situation of the modern soldier than something like The Hurt
Locker... That is, till we're treated to one of those big Walls of
Text about how all soldiers everywhere are heroes for keeping America
safe from our enemies. It feels a little disingenuous to outright
idealize values like brotherhood and keeping one's home country safe
when I just spent the last few hours killing very realistically
animated representations of human beings - even if they were all
Taliban. And then Linkin Park plays during the credits.
It sucks to me that Medal of Honor had a real opportunity to offer a
deeper, more human interpretation of current events and in the end,
save for some pretty interesting moments, it was pretty lukewarm. Its
funny, because that didn't stop the game from receiving backlash
in the media. The Medal of Honor situation is pretty sad to me on the
whole, considering that first-person war games could only exist as
they do today because of the first installment 10 years ago. It's like
the relationship between Guitar Hero and Rock Band, or kinda like how
The Mummy ripped off the original Indiana Jones trilogy, and then
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ripped off The Mummy. Ideas are funny.
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is a sickness.
Strange Journey's fascinating scenario of an expedition to the South
Pole to investigate an expanding pool of nothingness that threatens to
swallow the world is designed to make you feel like something is
always wrong. The game takes place from the first-person perspective
of your hero, so you can only see in front of you. No creature is
visible until you are both occupying the same space. And even when you
return from your dungeon-crawling back to your base, all of your
allies are represented by static, unmoving images that are so small
as to seem very far away from you. The game constantly reinforces the
idea that you are alone in a land that doesn't welcome you.
As the game goes on, all of your safety measures are neutralized. Your
technologies fail, new forces appear to antagonize you, and your
closest comrades trade their humanity to embrace the insanity around
them. There's a mounting, apocalyptic sensation coinciding with the
realization that none of the methods you choose to resolve this
conflict is going to be a happy one.
The main problem with Strange Journey's story is that it's attached to
a game in which entire dungeons are filled with trapdoors and warp
tiles that you won't know about until you walk on them.
I only realized just now that Strange Journey was probably always going to be a dungeon-crawler with trapdoors, warp tiles
and randomly-appearing items, and that the story about humanity's
self-destruction was just an add-on so they knew how to design the
cover. It's kind of brilliant to have a dungeons designed to highlight
all of man's follies - war, excess, consumption - and then have the
player spend hours fighting, fusing demons and grinding for the sake
of another fucking JRPG. Strange Journey could have been a psychedelic
survival horror, but it had to be another god damn number orgy.
Once you've played this game long enough, all of the things that made
the tone of the story so compelling become just frustrating. All of
your allies are small and they don't move. For some cockamamie reason
activating auto-battle makes all damage invisible. Playing this game
feels like playing another, more immersive game on the other side of
a window with those gloves specialists use to handle radioactive
materials. I don't remember the last time that I wished so anxiously
that the next dungeon would be the last. And I never found out how it
ended because the only advice I could find for overcoming the final
boss was "level up".
Now, all of the clever Shin Megami Tensei mechanics are there.
Contracting and fusing demons, balancing your party's strengths and
weaknesses while exploiting those of your enemy, and there are some
boss fights that require an expert understanding of these principles
in order to overcome them. If that sounds good to you, please, play
2009's Devil Survivor instead. Its characters emote, there are
no trapdoors to fall into, and your decisions actually affect the
story in ways outside of changing the color of your name to reflect
your alignment.
After forming pacts with the Summons Spirits of Wind and Earth,
acquiring the Horn of a Unicorn sleeping at the bottom of a lake,
returning to my childhood home to obtain an Exsphere shard, and
reviving the Linkite Tree - the nuts of which play a beautiful song
when rattled by the wind that attracts the Summon Spirit Aska - I was
finally face to face to face with the mythical two-headed bird, a
combination of Moltres and Doduo. My party told Aska we summoned it so
that we might form a pact with it.
"Have you formed a pact with the Summon Spirit Luna?" it asked me.
What? No. I've never even heard of Luna.
"I will not form a pact with you unless you form a pact with Luna as well."
Colette, not seeming to be bothered by this assertion, says, "I guess
we have no choice but to form a pact with Luna."
"Then I will join Luna and wait for your arrival," Aska says.
No one thinks to object to this. No one stands up and says, "No, that
is fucking stupid, Aska. We will form a pact with Luna later,
but since we SUMMONED you and you CAME, we will form a pact with you
RIGHT NOW, because rewarding a series of fetch quests with yet another
fetch quest is the kind of dramatic blue balls the likes of which I
have never known in a video game."
But no, Aska just flies away. Someone in my party guesses that we'll
have to defeat both Aska and Luna simultaneously, so we'd better be
prepared.
So now I have to find Luna, and the game has given me zero clues about
where the fuck Luna is. Even in the SYNOPSIS menu that lists all of
the events of the game as they happen and what should happen next,
there's nothing indicating what direction I should go in. So I'm
opening a god damn walkthrough.
This game is actually making me miss FF13. It was impossible to get
lost in that game, and when something stupid happened there was
usually at least one character that said something about it.
Okay, so the walkthrough says that I have to go to the Temple of
Darkness in order to find out that the Temple of Darkness is too dark
to go into. Hey, you fucking idiots, you formed a pact with the Summon
Spirit of Fire. Why don't you use a fucking TORCH?
But, no, we have to go to the Elemental Research Laboratory in
Meltokio, a city from which our party is exiled so we have to slip in
through the sewer dungeon as not to get caught. Strangely, when I
reach the sewer entrance, it gives me the option to "quick jump" into
the city rather than going through the dungeon again. How come that
wasn't an option when I had to revisit all of those dungeons to get
the Summon Spirits? How come I can't quick jump to the fun part of
the game?
Symphonia uses the really good trope of the mentor that becomes the
antagonist, but they fuck it up. Kratos, the good bad guy, was just
going for a stroll through Meltokio when he ran into us, and we asked
him what he's up to in terms of his evil plots. He said, "I don't need
to tell you that now. And also, stop forming pacts with Summon
Spirits, there will be consequences that you cannot understand." Hey,
dude, why don't you murder us instead of being a cryptic
asshole?
"Be patient, Lloyd," he says before leaving.
"What does that mean?" Lloyd asks. Man, I don't know.
This game, like so many others, was made by a pack of artless losers
whose greatest inspirations come from anime and other video games.
Actually, it's more likely that Tales Studio was inspired by video
games that were inspired by other video games that were inspired by
anime. What I'm saying is that they're retarded.
This is the best thing to come from Symphonia
"The blue candle should be of use to you," says a researcher. "The
holy candle that negates the darkness," our healer Raine reflects
thoughtfully. What the fuck, Raine? If you're so smart, why didn't you
bring it up before? She always does this. Also, a fucking candle
doesn't have to be "holy" in order to do what regular candles already
do pretty well.
"Wait, we can't help them," say another researcher. "They got Kate in
trouble. She's going to be executed for helping these renegades.
"Oh, no!" Colette says. "We've got to help her." "Yes," Presea says.
"I want to help her too."
"What are we supposed to do?" Lloyd and I ask, hoping the answer is
fucking forget about it and get on with our quest to save the god damn
world.
"How about participating in the matches being held at the Coliseum?"
the buff Regal suggests.
I actually lost it when that speech bubble popped up with those words
in it. I was like, "Fuck this game. Cliche fucking piece of shit with
inconsistent-ass characters twiddling their fucking thumbs and putting
their hands on their hips and solving ancient mysteries that
apparently no one with a modicum of intelligence bothered with before
these guys rolled around."
Then I was like, "Thank fucking god, maybe something exciting will
happen now." In case you haven't figured it out, I'm not playing this
game for the god damn story anymore, but for the combat system
(Indeed, the description of the combat system is higher up on the
games Wikipedia page than the description of the plot). At least,
that's what I thought. Lately the only time I change my strategy is to
swap in Raine to heal my party during boss fights.
The Coliseum gave me a run for my money, though. I usually use my AI
partner to distract extraneous enemies while I focus on one, but I can
only use one character for these fights. I had to make a point of
positioning myself just out of range of attack, but close enough to my
target - a delicate balance. And healing items were banned from use.
But it doesn't matter, because after the first fight we walk to the
cells and free Kate. Then we're all standing outside of the Coliseum
and shes like, "Thank you." WHAT? Are the Pope and his knights fucking morons? There are nine wanted criminals, all with
colorful hair, standing outside of a popular public venue and NOBODY
IS ARRESTING THEM.
ANYWAY, Kate needs a place to hide now, I guess. She says, "Take me to
Ozette. It's where I was born." I say, "Fuck you, you dumb cunt, we
already saved you from demise, walk there yourself if you wanna go
there so bad." Then the game just teleports us there, where Kate tells
us that she's the Pope's daughter.
For a second we see an interesting parallel here between Kate vying
for approval as a researcher under the corrupted Pope and Colette's
ascension into the role of Chosen under the scheming Remiel, her
angelic father. Unfortunately, we realize that because Colette pretty
much says, "Hey, my relationship with my father is pretty much like
your relationship with your father. Isn't that funny?"
That's not how story works, guys. It's like the passage in Twilight
where Bella Whatsherface has an argument with her father and storms
out the front door of the house, and then the book mentions that it's
the same door her mother left her father through years before. That's
not a symbol, that's just an explanation. You can't just say something
and have it be meaningful because you said it is.
Regal: Opposites will always be at odds with each other.
Sylvarant and Tethe'alla. Humans and elves. Heaven and Earth. Raine: And those in the middle are sacrificed.
[...] Lloyd: Yeah... Let's get the blue candle so we can form a pact
with Shadow.
Shut the fuck up. Suck my fucking dick with that nonsense. That's what
I wanted to do, but you guys just wanted to dick around. Was the
Temple of Darkness too dark inside to see just so that I could
discover this NPC's backstory? Is that seriously what the Coliseum was
made for, this one piddly sequence? That's almost as bad as the resort
town that has a casino where you can't gamble. I spend more
time in the lobbies of buildings talking to NPCs then I spent doing
interesting things in interesting places.
And what the fuck happened to LUNA?
I swear, I'd quit this game if I knew I wasn't so close to the end of it.
Actually, no. I can't keep playing this. Now that I've said all of
this, I can't play it in good conscience. It's over. I'm keeping the
save data, I'm keeping what few good memories I have left, and thanks,
Andres, for lending it to us, but I'm done. I'll read how it ends,
because imagining it for myself will probably be more exciting than
watching it.
And, y'know, I've never figured out what "Symphonia" actually is.
Probably some bullshit.
Some advice. If you want to play an RPG with an awesome combat system and Nordic influences, but you also want a story with some class instead of silly baloney for babies, play Valkyrie Profile.
Many games that come out of Japan have had bad scripts and bad voice acting, but Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner features the rare combination of an excellent voice cast - the kind usually expected by a Kojima production - with a terribly written script. At several times throughout it becomes obvious that the script was translated word-for-word, often literally, from the Japanese. Some clauses are too long to sound natural, and some characters who probably used very particular phrases in Japanese just sound like they're talking past each other in English. Most of the time it functions well enough, but on in a while it's actually pretty amazing that the actors could be so committed in their deliveries of lines that just barely make sense.
Sometimes it's funny, and, shit, some people would say it's part of the game's charm, but I think it robs the game of its drama. The story could actually be really good. We have the cocksure Dingo Egret, haunted by his lost comrades and a deserter betrayed by his superior, Nohman, the commander of a Martian rebellion force, now driven mad with power. After a "fatal" injury, Dingo is hooked up to the Orbital Frame (read: giant robot) Jehuty in order to stay alive, thanks to Ken Marinaris, a spy who seeks to redeem herself and her father who worked under Nohman. On Mars he meets Leo Stenbuck, the protagonist of the first game who offers his help, but really just wants to be the hero again.
The characters' histories are actually worked pretty poetically into their motivations. Dingo's sudden willingness to protect others stems from his failure to protect his old comrades. Ken's feelings for Dingo suggest that she has daddy issues, since both men worked under Nohman and have saved her life. Leo, who needlessly throws himself in danger's way since he's given up control of Jehuty, actually appears to be somewhat suicidal. The story could have reached Metal Gear Solid levels of awesome melodrama. But with the script the way it is, all of these little tidbits seem to get lost. Instead, Dingo seems inconsistent, Ken is just a woman in a video game, and Leo looks like an idiot.
Fortunately, the rest of the game is still intact.
ZOE2 is an action/adventure game, that special kind of game assembled out of set pieces arranged in a very specific order, like beads on a necklace. They're hard to define - not so much from a certain genre as from a certain class of style. They're the natural evolution of the most basic kind of arcade game, a very carefully designed level-by-level progression of more fantastic sights and escalating challenges, offering a variety of possible utilities for a simple and accessible array of actions. I'd say the most shining example of the last decade is still Resident Evil 4. Often when I say that a video game is really "video gamey" and I mean it as a compliment, I usually mean it's simple, fun and short enough that I'd want to play it again a year later over the course of a Saturday afternoon.
What keeps Zone of the Enders 2 from being mentioned in the same breath as Resident Evil 4 is a few hiccups in terms of pacing. A few of the set piece beads on this action-packed necklace would probably look awfully nice on some other game, but they don't flatter ZOE2 at all.
It's a curious condition that some action games have. Developers seem to fear that the combat might become too repetitive, so they shake it up by introducing some new element or puzzle. Almost always, attempts to alleviate this imagined monotony harm the game's cohesion more than doing nothing possibly could have: jumping through spinning spikes in God of War, swimming around fighting ghost fish in Ninja Gaiden, etc. Its like, "Guys, I was having fun fighting those ninjas - WHY would you take them away from me?"
ZOE2 has about 15 "levels", and 3 of them are not that fun. In the scheme of things that might not seem so bad, but they all seem come at the worst moments. They all occur right after really fun sequences, and they all occur in the first half of the game, while you're still trying to figure out if you like it.
After the pre-title sequence, the game dumps you off at Deimos, and for a reason that hasn't really been specified yet, you have to find a Space Force soldier named Taper, a whiny, bespectacled coward (the Otacon of the game). He is hiding in a shipping container to stay safe. To find him you must search all of the cargo bays and use clues he provides to locate the specific box he's hiding in, and fire a shot to let him know that you found him.
At this point in the game, the player is unlikely to have discovered that ZOE2 supports the Dual Shock 2's pressure sensitive buttons, and that you can shoot a SMALL laser bullet by pressing the button lightly and a LARGE laser bullet by pressing the button firmly. As such, MOST PLAYERS who are lucky to find Taper's box will shoot him with the large laser bullet, exploding the box and killing him, resulting in a Game Over. What makes this more confusing is that shooting any box that Taper ISN'T in with either the small or large laser bullet will explode it, leading the player to believe that a small shot will also destroy Taper's box, which it wouldn't. This in turn leads to the player trying any number of ways to get Taper out of his box, none of which will work until her or she tries shooting them again. On top of everything, destroying any box will cause "security measures" to kick in and relocate all boxes to new cargo bays, forcing you to start over - though, fortunately, Taper gives you a new clue each time this happens.
Come on, guys. You don't start your ground-breaking action game by making the player feel like an idiot. And you don't put a puzzle in a game in which all your actions involve lethal force. It's like the bomb disposal mission from Metal Gear Solid 2 all over again, though at least that had sub-badass tortured bomb disposal expert Peter Stillman. This mission has Taper.
Though Taper-in-the-Box is the worst offender in the game, there are two others I can think of: a mission in which you have to keep misguided soldiers from destroyed civilian buildings (again, it's hard to be a pacifist when even moving threatens the lives of all around you), and a minefield that you have to cross based on directions given by your shrill, busty, backseat driver.
Interestingly, the core ideas of both of these mission are reapplied again much more successfully later in the game. During one boss fight, your enemy disables your ability to visualize your surroundings, represented by pitting you in endless darkness. You instead must rely on the guidance of your onboard AI, ADA, who tells you what attacks are being used against you and giving the distance between you and the boss. You have to close that distance quickly to reduce the amount of attacks that get thrown at you, but you also have to be ready to react appropriately to whatever ADA tells you. It forces the player to reapply what they've learned without being restrictive, in the end making them better at the game itself.
Another mission, possibly the most well-remembered by anyone who's played the game, requires you to defeat over 400 enemy units with the assistance of 40 Space Force soldiers. In order to win you must effectively split your time between thinning out the enemy and bolstering your own forces. Brilliantly, the way you save your units is by using the non-lethal Geyser subweapon to immobilize them, protect them from further damage and alert your buddy Leo to their presence so that he can heal them. Once you figure out how the fuck to lock-on to your allies without killing them, it's a clever solution to the whole "pacifist death machine" problem. Not only is this sequence incredibly visually impressive, the frame of the story up to this point makes it far more dramatic than the civilian-saving scenario from earlier.
When the game trusts itself, it's brilliant. It's simple to comprehend, satisfying to master, the second half is one spectacular action-packed set-piece after another, and to this day it's the pinnacle of full 360-degree 3D control - who knew ascending with the Triangle button and descending with the X button would be so effective? Unfortunately, its flaws in presentation and pacing keep it from attaining the widespread appeal needed to attain "game of the decade" status. And so Zone of the Enders will always be a cult classic. If you never intend to play it, you can at least watch the ridiculous trailer, which highlights everything good about the game.
An interesting fact, something I never knew before, is that Inhert and its pilot Lloyd, the boss you fight in absolute darkness, were designed by Kazuma Kaneko of the Shin Megami Tensei series. Makes sense. The guy's all about beautiful figures with weird things embedded in their faces.
Also, one of the singers from Heart of Air, who perform the theme songs for ZOE1 and ZOE2, is also part of Oranges & Lemons, who perform the theme song for Azumanga Daioh. You're welcome for that information.
